


The Grass Is Greener Where It Rains

by itsavolcano



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Characters dealing with trauma, F/M, Post-Framework, Spoilers through 4X20, season 4 speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 23:38:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10864509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsavolcano/pseuds/itsavolcano
Summary: Fitz dug the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, struggling to erase the image of the AI from his brain, remembering his twisted declarations of love. He loved Jemma. He did. He knew it. But AIDA had manipulated his memories, had used his words against him until he was no longer sure what was real and what was true.





	The Grass Is Greener Where It Rains

**Author's Note:**

> I recommend listening to "Eve, the Apple of My Eye" by Bell X1-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5hRa_l9VAE. (Sidenote: They are my favorite band and I recommend their entire list) I am posting this on my lunch break so... there's no doubt I will fiddle with it later... All the thanks to dilkirani for the beta and the encouragement!

_ Five months after returning from the Framework. _

 

  1. _In the garden, Snake was a charmin'/ And Eve said let's give it a try_



“I will never grow bored of this,” Jemma murmured, her back pressed to his chest as she leaned against him. He could only hum in contented agreement, his arms wrapped around her, holding her close. Together, they watched the sunrise from the small garden behind their two-level cottage. They had a clear view of the sky as it turned periwinkle and pink, but Fitz couldn’t take his eyes off of Jemma, mesmerized by the light reflecting across her face. She was practically glowing and the sight filled his heart until it felt like it might burst. 

He was just so  _ happy _ . In truth, he hadn’t expected to ever feel this way again, had almost let his grief, anger and guilt pull him under like a tidal wave. But instead, when he was at his lowest, Jemma had come to him, her cool hands threading through his hair, and whispered an absolution: “Let’s leave this place, Fitz.” His confusion must’ve been evident because she’d soon added, “I think it’s time we start that future we’ve been talking about.” 

There had been so much forgiveness, so much love, radiating from Jemma that Fitz couldn’t find the words to say no—he didn’t  _ want  _ to say no. They both had so much healing to do and he knew that it would be nearly impossible to cope, to forgive himself, surrounded by so many terrible memories. All he wanted, all he needed, was Jemma Simmons holding his hand. She meant  _ everything _ to him. 

And just like that, they’d packed up what little belongings they had and left. 

Now, many months later, Fitz and Jemma had built a life in Perthshire. They had quietly eloped with the distant promise to have a ceremony and invite their friends—a time well after the baby was born, of course. He couldn’t swallow back the wonder he felt at the knowledge that  _ they were going to have a baby _ and ran his palm over the barely noticeable swell of Jemma’s abdomen. Beneath his hand rested the life they had created together—a life they had created with  _ intent _ and most importantly with love. 

His wife glanced up, eyes bright and smiling as she raised up on her toes to kiss him. Her lips against his were a cooling balm, a reminder of her love and forgiveness. He would never tire of it and he was thankful she was here in his arms. As she turned her body to him, he cupped her head in his hands, drawing her in for a deeper kiss. She was flush against him, her body curved to meet his, and he couldn’t resist the press of his hips against hers. A smile threatened at the corners of his lips as she moaned softly, but he swallowed it down, threading his fingers into her soft wavy hair, tipping her head back, drinking her in. With a final nip, she pulled back from him.

“I think we should take this back to the house, don’t you agree?” She grinned, running the soft pads of her thumbs against his cheeks as he pretended to consider her offer. 

“Lest we should scandalize MacLachlan’s roaming herd of sheep, yes.” 

Her laugh was the greatest sound—melodic and sweet, carefree. Then, she took his hand in hers and gently tugged him back to the house—of course, it didn’t take much for him to follow. He would follow her anywhere. 

As they climbed up the stone steps leading to the back door and crossed the threshold into their cottage, Jemma snatched up a ripe banana from the ceramic bowl next to the sink. 

“It’s strangely fitting that I would crave  _ bananas  _ of all things during this pregnancy.” She popped a bite into her mouth but Fitz barely paid her any mind as something else caught his eye. 

“We’ll definitely have to deck the nursery out in a monkey theme,” he offered, distracted as he turned to follow the glimmer of light caught on the door frame, highlighting a splinter he’d never before noticed. 

“Mmm. Although to be fair, I have been craving just about everything. Ice cream, bananas. Jalapenos. Sometimes all three together. It’s quite disgusting, but of course I blame you entirely.” She looked up as if expecting some haughty retort, but Fitz was too absorbed in the splinter to notice.

He rubbed a finger against it, digging his nail into the divot in the wood. The pressure caused it to pixelate and pool, and a strange sensation coiled in his gut. 

“Fitz?” Jemma’s tone was curious, if not slightly worried, as she took in his confused frown. 

“Jemma? Did you see—?”

But he failed to finish his question before the programmed world slipped away and he was alone, the mechanical halo releasing its hold around his temples with a slick hiss. 

Gasping, Fitz bolted upright from a worn but plush chair, the escape key gripped in his bad hand. He must’ve hit the button on accident. Or the coding was failing. Disgusted, he yanked the halo from his head and tossed it to the floor along with the escape button. 

Casting an eye around his rented flat, Fitz practically groaned. The drabby off-white paint was cracked and peeling, the curtains barely touched the window sill, and takeaway containers littered every flat surface. It was a sty. The complete opposite of the home he’d programmed into the virtual reality. Nothing about this flat was welcoming nor comforting.

It didn’t matter. He deserved this half-life for what he’d done. Not that happy home with Jemma. Not a marriage, a family. But he’d programmed his own little escape anyway—a place where he could get away, could remember the life he’d once been so close to achieving.

He swallowed down the bile threatening at the back of his throat. Although Jemma had repeatedly told him none of the Doctor’s actions in the Framework were his fault, he knew better. His actions in the Framework had felt natural—he questioned none of it, fought bitterly to keep the fabricated world intact. Fought to protect her… Madame Hydra.  _ Ophelia _ .

Fitz dug the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, struggling to erase the image of the AI from his brain, remembering his twisted declarations of love.  _ He loved Jemma.  _ He did. He knew it. But AIDA had manipulated his memories, had used his words against him until he was no longer sure what was real and what was true. 

Jemma’s grief-stricken face played at the front of his mind, her sad, bruised eyes pooling with tears whenever she looked at him.  _ Jemma pleading with him to remember.  _ During the first few days, he’d done his best to keep far away from her, from all of the team members. Daisy had sought him out but he’d been unable to look at her—how could he, after the abuse he’d subjected her to?  _ He’d slapped her. —He’d shot Jemma.  _ Never, in his wildest— His mind stuttered to a halt, struggling to cope with the memories. These were the people he loved and he’d treated them so violently. 

The remaining team members had begun their necessary healing, pouring all their extra energy into rebuilding the base, into reestablishing their fractured agency. But Fitz hadn’t been able to bring himself to help. Everything he touched turned to stone and he refused to repair tech let alone build new devices. He didn't trust his brain to not corrupt the tech—or for the tech to not corrupt him. Everything he once held to be true regarding science was destroyed. He felt helpless. 

And so six weeks after returning from the Framework, Fitz had done the only thing he could do. He left. He was of no use to anyone on the team. Couldn’t bring himself to talk to Daisy. Or Coulson. Couldn’t hold Jemma when she reached for him… Didn't want to touch her with hands that had harmed, had killed.

Before the Framework, before the LMD uprising, he had been  _ so happy _ . He’d had his lab and the love of his life by his side, but then everything had fallen apart. A victim of hubris. After all, he’d only gone along with Radcliffe’s LMD program in order to protect the team—to protect Jemma. He had failed spectacularly. 

He'd promised her he needed a couple weeks at home, visiting his mother in Glasgow. He wasn’t sure if she believed him exactly—hadn’t she said something similar all those years ago? In the end, he'd gone in the opposite direction of Scotland. He went to Bucharest.

 

  1. _Now this applies both equally to you and I / The only thing we share is the same sky_



Fitz had spent months living in a hell of his own design—be it the virtual reality where Jemma was his wife and they were happily expecting their first child, or the hauntingly beautiful Romanian city where he had first felt her tremble under the press of his mouth, hands... 

Fitz flinched at the memory, at the loss. Bucharest was also where he had met Holden Radcliffe and set about the mechanisms that would lead to the splintering of a life he’d held so dear. Wandering through the old streets, he dug his toe into the broken cement. 

He had little need for money, wasn’t sure he could bring himself to touch even the most basic of tools, and so he spent most days wandering through the center of the city or tripping over uneven cobblestone alleyways. A few months into his exile, he’d entertained the idea of a hobby—painting or poetry—but everything felt too hollow, and so he instead just did his best to occupy his time with long walks. But sometimes, when he was feeling particularly melancholy and, well, destructive, he submerged himself in the virtual reality he’d constructed. While he wasn’t about to build consumable tech for others, he had few qualms about redesigning an early prototype of the Framework program.  _ We should build a place to get away. A meadow, or a cottage somewhere.  _

Fitz shook the memory away, his hands deep in the pockets of his wool coat. Dimly, he felt exposed—as if there were eyes on him, but after a careful look at his surroundings, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He had covered his tracks so well, not even Daisy could discover his location. 

On his way back to the flat, he’d stopped at a street vendor, seeking out some fresh fruit to balance his corn chip and cheese puff diet. He fumbled with the key as he unlocked the door, the paper bag of plums slipping from his grasp. Annoyed, he kicked the rolling fruit into the flat. More cheese puffs it was, then. 

Then he noticed it—the scent of warm spice filling the air. With eyes locked on the kitchen and heart pounding in his chest, he stepped forward cautiously. Before he made it too far, the fire alarm began to shriek, and, startled, he dropped his keys.

“Honestly, browning meat shouldn’t set off an alarm, you bloody piece of junk.”

A soft, familiar voice called out and Fitz froze in shock, eyes still fixed on the doorway leading to the kitchen.  _ Jemma _ . 

Soon, she moved across his line of sight, chasing the billows of smoke with a rag.

She wasn’t real, dressed in a navy blue sweater and her long hair pulled up in a ponytail. He knew she couldn’t be real. It was just his traitorous mind once again playing tricks on him. 

But then, she stopped mid-step, arm still stretched overhead as she looked at him, and he knew the truth. Blood buzzed through his body, every nerve-ending vibrated.

“Hi, Fitz.” She smiled cautiously before worrying her lip with her teeth. “You’re just in time for spag bol.”

This wasn’t a figment or a simulation, this was real. His breath caught in his throat and he staggered, his shoulder wedged against the doorframe.

 

  1. _If I had you here, I'd clip your wings / Snap you up and leave you sprawling on my pin_



He barely spoke through dinner. The large heaping of salad Jemma had shoveled onto his plate tasted like sawdust and the pasta he managed to gulp down felt like lead in his gut. It was the first home cooked meal he’d had in months, and, just like everything else, he hadn’t been able to enjoy it. 

Once the initial shock had worn off, he hadn’t been able to look directly at her, despite her attempts at casual conversation. The gulf of silence grew, and she struggled to fill the void with idle chatter. It reminded Fitz of when they’d first met and he’d had no idea what to say to this brilliant, whirlwind of a girl following him around, elbowing her way into his path. Once again, the words stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was no longer afraid to say something stupid; he worried about hurting her. 

Now, he was hiding in the cramped bathroom, sitting on the edge of the rusted tub, his bouncing knees knocking against the wall and the sink. Hands fisted, he was doing his best to breathe through the panic clawing its way up his spine. He fought down the urge to retch.  _ What brought her here? How had she found him? Why hadn’t he thought to ask?  _

Before he could begin to form any possible hypotheses, something shattered in the other room. He bolted upright, practically pulling the door from its hinges. 

“Jemma?” He rounded into living room, but her back was to him, her shoulders rounded up to her ears. “Jem—?”

The words dried up as she held up the virtual reality halo and escape module. His gaze darted between her hands and her red-rimmed, angry eyes. 

“ _ What _ ,” she spat and he recoiled, “ _ is this _ ?”

He found himself moving to her, longing to close the gap, to explain, but she shrank away from him and his heart shattered once more. Defeated, he stopped. 

“It’s not what it looks like.” He couldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m not… I’m not going back there. It’s—different.” 

“What is it, then?” Her tone was just as angry, but this time she sounded slightly more incredulous and he looked up then, seeking her out. He wanted to rewind time, move it back to that morning, to a time when she hadn’t invaded his solitude. Or to rewind it even further, back when he had yet to disappoint her, to leave her broken-hearted…

She was staring at him with such hurt but he couldn’t keep the truth from her. 

“Home.” His voice cracked on the word. “You. Us. I just—I needed—”  What did he need exactly? Besides absolution? 

“You can have that, Fitz. I’m not the one who walked away. I didn’t leave you. Do you think I dove into that hell for you to just walk away?” She slammed the device to the wood floor and he winced as it splintered into sharp fragments. “ _ I love you.”  _

He remembered a time when she said those words to the man in the Framework. When she pleaded. But he can’t lie and say she means nothing to him. If that were the case, he wouldn’t be caught in this terrible cycle of self-flagellation. Instead, he closed his eyes. Tried to shut out the pain. A pink sunrise played at the edges of the darkness, the soft sound of her laughter echoed and he thought he could feel her hand over his…

He opened his eyes, surprised to find her hand resting on top of his balled fist. And then she guided him to the nearest chair.

“We should have had this out months ago, but you were so…” She trailed off with a shake of her head, no doubt remembering the vacant look in his eyes, the days he barely ate, barely slept—the days he slept too much. He was so tired of disappointing her.

“Why are you here, Jemma?” He whispered the question, so curious and so worried to hear her reply. 

“I thought,” she took a breath, “that if I gave you just a little space to process, you’d eventually come ‘round. Which, in hindsight, was completely stupid.” 

A laugh bubbled up at the back of his throat but it was mirthless.

“We need to approach this recovery just as we approach everything,” she said, her cool hands running down his arms. When he looked up, curious, she added, “ _ Together _ .” 

“I don’t understand how you can stand to be in the same room with me.” He licked his lips, struggling to put his thoughts into words. “After seeing that monster…”

“When I look at you, I don’t see that man. I see the sweet boy I met at sixteen—pasty, shy. I see the brilliant man who has saved his friends, who recklessly dove through portals trying to find me. I know what it’s like now, Fitz, to live in a world where you aren’t… Please, please don’t make me live without you. I don’t think I can do it.” 

He tipped his face into her hands, giving himself over to the sensation of her forgiving caress. 

“Jemma Simmons can do anything she sets her mind to,” he whispered, catching her slight flinch at his words. But he didn’t mean them as a dismissal, he wasn’t sending her away. 

Instead he leaned forward, cautiously, his lips parted and waiting. He wanted her to be sure, to understand that he was giving all he could give. Sensing his intent, she looked up, hopeful.

“I love you,” she said, this time with soft reverence.

“I...I don't know what that looks like anymore, Jemma.” And he meant it. The concept had been twisted and turned in his brain. He knew he loved her, but so much of his simulated life in the Framework had been false incentives and misguided devotion, he was no longer sure what unconditional love looked like when reflected back. 

She dropped kisses to his cheeks, his eyelids, the tip of his nose, and he was reminded of a time long ago when they managed to save each other against all scientific odds. 

Then, gently resting her forehead against him before pressing her lips to his, she whispered, “Then let me show you.”  

 

  1. _I think will we sink or swim?/ 'Cause we could do either on a whim_



Fitz woke, spent, legs tangled in the sheets. Warm with sleep, he stretched an arm out, reaching for Jemma but found cool sheets. A bolt of panic dropped through him and he sat up, taking in the bedroom, cast in shadows by the early morning light.  _ Had she left? Had she been there at all? _

Before his thoughts could wander too far, footsteps approached the hallway and he sighed with relief as Jemma came into view. 

A mug of piping hot tea was nestled in her hands, and her long hair was falling around her shoulders in sleep-tousled waves. She’d managed to pull on his discarded t-shirt, and the neckline slipped down, giving him a clear view of her warm, freckled skin. 

Without a word, she handed him the tea but he set it aside, too caught up in the sight of her—that he hadn’t dreamt her, that she hadn’t left. She wasn’t a figment of his trauma, or a coded simulation. She was real, and she loved him. She wanted nothing from him but to be in his arms. How could he deny her?

He tugged her close and she rocked forward, dropping into his embrace. Unable to resist the temptation of her bare skin, he nipped at her clavicle, ran his whiskered cheek against the top of her breast and then soothed away the redness with his tongue. Equally emboldened, she threaded her fingers through his curls until he tipped his head up to meet her heated kiss. 

“We still have a lot to talk about.” She slanted her mouth against his and he hummed in agreement. Then, taking his hand, she broke the kiss and guided him from the bed. “But first, I want to show you something. Although, I’m sad to say, you’ll need pants.” 

She giggled, retrieving the mug from the nightstand, and it was the greatest sound he’d ever heard. Sweet, melodic. Pulling on bottoms and a fresh t-shirt, he followed her as she climbed out the bedroom window and onto the fire escape. With a roll of her eyes, she motioned for him to sit on a step before curling up between his legs. He wrapped his arms around her and she leaned back against him. 

“I’ll never tire of this,” she sighed and he agreed as the sun rose in the sky, casting a rosy hue over the city.

It wasn’t a clear view, but it was something. It was beautiful.


End file.
